It is evident however that the English Parliament could not be moved to adopt such a course. In the elections the government had been again as unsuccessful on this occasion as it had been ten or twelve years before. The boroughs had the preponderance at the elections, and in the boroughs the party devoted to the Presbyterian and Parliamentary cause were in the ascendant. The oppression of the system previously pursued, and the apprehension of worse consequences, had necessarily led to this result. We learn that even in Westminster the King failed to procure [A.D. 1640.] a seat in the House of Commons for a confidential servant of his court: supporters of the Opposition were elected under his very eyes[170]. A disadvantageous influence had been exercised from the very first by the reappearance of the man who had given occasion to the last violent scenes in the year 1629, and who was in ill repute with every one--John Finch, who now came forward as Lord Keeper. His appearance awakened the old controversies and the old hatred. And moreover the disloyalty of the Scots failed to produce so great an impression as was expected, because it was partly a result of the religious conflict. France was regarded as the protector of Protestantism, which, on the contrary, was in danger from a King who belonged to it. The French government had not been slow to release the Elector Palatine from prison, on the receipt of the warning which was addressed to it; it had removed this cause of offence as well as others, and in both Houses of Parliament it reckoned decided partisans. Thus it came to pass that Charles I was encountered in the Parliament of 1640 by an opposition no less resolute than that which had led to the dissolution of the Parliament of 1629. The very first speaker who made himself heard, Grimstone, set off domestic grievances against the complaints which the King made of the Scots; he dwelt above all on the infringement of the obligations undertaken by the acceptance of the Petition of Right. He said that freedom and property had been shaken, the Church thrown into confusion, and the true religion even persecuted. While appealing for support to a passage of the Bible he gave utterance to the significant opinion that men ought to enquire how this result had come to pass, and who had given the advice which had brought it about.